Choosing a Weathervane for our new workshop

Now that we're all settled in our new Scottish home and we've had some time to wind down over christmas, we've been discussing which weathervane design to mount on top of our new workshop...

For our previous workshop in industrial north manchester we chose our signature fox weathervane. I've actually since re designed this one, partly for aesthetic reasons (think I got bored of the old one as we had it for nearly 10 years - we actually left it for the new owners of our workshop as it's still in great condition, and wanted to leave something of ourselves in a workshop we had grown quite fond of) It's also great to update designs from time to time  - we're always looking to improve the quality and longevity of our work. The letters were gilded as well which really made it stand out against the usually grey Manchester sky so this is definitely something I'd do again.

There's a huge amount of wildlife in our local area so this seems an obvious choice to consider. In spring and summer the hills are full of chattering swallows - I actually really miss them now they have migrated south for the winter; the weeks after their departure did seem very quiet so would be nice to have them flying above our workshop all winter. We even had some nesting on top of the electric meter in the workshop! I'd also be really tempted to go for a Deer or Stag design; they're such magnificent animals and through autumn the valley echoes with the sounds of stags roaring.

Our workshop is situated in the middle of sheep farming country, so that points me to another popular design; our sheep and Collie! We have our own 4 year old border collie (not a working dog, being from the city he's more into agility and flyball). One of my favourite design commissions is when a customer asks me to create a weathervane based on their border collie - definitely my favourite breed of dog, and after spending ages drawing a dog in the right herding stance, it's relatively straightforward to alter it to match the markings and coat of another dog, making a wonderful personalised gift.

And then there is the vehicle debate. We're really proud of our range of car and motorbike weathervanes, especially the vintage ones like the stunning brough superior, and with David  being a massive petrol head, this was always going to be part of the debate. Though they are the most fiddly and time consuming designs to produce, we're always happy to work from photos of customers motorbikes, and given that we are just outside the town of Hawick which produced the famous motorcycle racers Steve Hislop and Jimmy Guthrie, maybe something along this theme would be very appropriate too!

A very tough choice... Has anyone else found choosing a weathervane this difficult? I'll post in a few weeks with a photo of which design we went for!